ABSTRACT
A key facet of globalization is international migration — the movement of large numbers of people across borders. As in the past, contemporary immigrants to the United States build communities in their new cities and towns. Yet these communities differ from the ethnic enclaves of the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth century migrations. Due to relatively inexpensive airfares, modern communications, and the availability of goods and services on a global basis, many of today’s immigrants readily construct “transnational communities” —spaces, both imagined and real, in which the worlds of homeland and host country intermingle. According to Peggy Levitt, who has written extensively on the topic, “transnational social expectations, cultural values, and patterns of human interaction ... are shaped by more than one social, economic, and political system” (2001: 197).
